Starfish

I'm hoping that while we have some time with an extra adult or two around for Spring Break, we will be able to go to the Aquarium.  Rachel was on the number 5 today in her handwriting book, so to tie those two together, we made starfish and colored and cut and numbered the legs.  Here's how you differentiate that instruction (good teacher terms, huh?):  Rachel wrote out her number fives, then drew, colored, and cut a starfish.  By herself, she numbered each leg and wrote her name on the starfish.  (She is five in case you've forgotten.)  I drew a starfish for Ford, he colored it and I helped him cut it out by himself.  I usually hold the paper for him if we're cutting out a specific shape and point him in the right direction.  Then I wrote numbers 1-4 on the legs and he wrote the 5 by himself.  We had done some practicing of the number 5 before we did this.  He wrote his name on the starfish, too.  (He's 3 and a half.)  Then I drew a starfish for Ruby, wrote her name on it and she counted 1-5 while I wrote the numbers on the legs.  She does not get to be close to scissors!!!  I cut out her starfish.  (She's 2.)  Then we put all of the starfish cut-outs on our number wall under number 5 since they have five legs. (***Update***Rachel made me move the starfish to the number 15 on the wall since there were three starfish with five legs each.  She's way too smart for her own good!) We talked about how we might see them at the aquarium next week and this afternoon (or should I say, this afternaptime) we are going to look up some pictures of starfish so they can see what it looks like on the back side!!  They really wanted to know where to put the face, but we didn't have a whole lot of time to look that up this morning, so I told them they'd have to wait.  Rachel did such a good job writing 0-100 yesterday that I didn't want to burn her out today by doing it again.  So, I had made little squares with the numbers on them from 0-100 and she put them in our 100 chart on the wall in order.  I was impressed by how quickly and efficiently she was able to do that.  Ford loved watching her do it and wants to try tomorrow.  I think he just wants to stand on the chair like she did, but whatever works!  While she was finishing up, he said he wanted to count, so I pointed to the numbers and he made it all the way to 50 before he got tired of counting!!  Such a smarty pants!
Today was our big Easter Egg Hunt at Story Time (one down, two to go!).  The kids had such a fun time and really enjoyed being a story time today.  They were so well behaved and I was so proud of them, that I let them eat every bit of the candy they got in their baskets (they were limited to four eggs each, so it was really not an overload of candy).  When we got home, they didn't even want to eat lunch because they were so stuffed from an Easter party and candy, so we just read some books and laid down for a nap.  I'm not sure how much sleeping will happen with Ford and Rachel today, but that's okay.  I still think a good 30 minutes of rest is super important to the rest of our day!

Here's a video I found on You Tube of a Starfish eating...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A100m5EpfFI